QB U: Are Quarterbacks Losing Their Heisman Trophy Grip?
Plus, Navy — yes, Navy! — has an offensive juggernaut.
Welcome to QB U, another regular feature I’m introducing at this here Substack, in which I highlight some items vaguely related to college football quarterbacks throughout the season. Why quarterbacks? I have this schedule-adjusted Points Above Replacement (PAR) metric for QBs going back to 1956, and I figure I should do something with that. If you have a QB U idea you’d like me to cover, email me1 and I’ll feature it in a future column!
🏈 Where Are All the QBs?
Like many of football’s “Most Valuable” awards — see an NFL MVP that has gone to QBs in 16 of the past 17 seasons — the Heisman Trophy has been dominated by quarterbacks in recent years. Going back to the dawn of the 2000s, 20 of the past 24 Heismans were won by QBs, including seven of the past eight:
That’s why it struck me as surprising that the top favorites for this year’s Heisman Trophy are not quarterbacks. Here’s the rundown of the odds, according to FanDuel:
Ashton Jeanty, RB, Boise State (+240)
Travis Hunter, WR/CB, Colorado (+320)
Cameron Ward, QB, Miami Florida (+450)
Jalen Milroe, QB, Alabama (+900)
Dillon Gabriel, QB, Oregon (+1400)
Carson Beck, QB, Georgia (+1400)
ESPN’s Pamela Maldonado also noted another player rising in the Heisman odds — Ohio State’s Jeremiah Smith… a wide receiver.
So what gives? Why are the QBs above playing catch-up when, traditionally, voters have tended to give them a big edge in the selection process? Here are a few theories:
🏆 Jeanty’s Dominance: In such a quarterback-dominated era, it takes an unbelievable performance in order for a non-QB to vault his way to the top of the Heisman rankings. And Jeanty’s performance absolutely fits that bill. He already has more than 1,000 rushing yards after just five games, a pace that would see him run for as many as 2,887 yards by season’s end (assuming Boise State plays in the MWC championship game plus a bowl), comfortably breaking Barry Sanders’ all-time single-season record of 2,628. Here’s where Jeanty currently sits on the single-season yards per game list (since 1956):
🏆 Hunter’s “Shohei Ohtani” Season: Just like Ohtani captivated us with his two-way play en route to MVPs in 2021 and 2023 (and a runner-up in 2022), the Buffaloes’ hybrid star has gained Heisman traction by doing things we haven’t really seen done before, at least not in college football’s current era.
Hunter ranks seventh nationally in receiving yards per game while also being one of only 88 defensive players with multiple interceptions on the season. Further, his 16.6 offensive rating and 16.3 defensive rating in
That type of combo helped Charles Woodson win the 1997 Heisman, and Hunter is a much higher-level receiver than Woodson was. (Woodson had 231 receiving yards in his Heisman campaign; Hunter had 721 yards in 9 games a year ago, and is tracking for nearly 1,500 this year if Colorado makes a bowl, which they should.)
🏆 A Down Year for Top QBs: Don’t discount the fact that this year’s Heisman hopeful QBs aren’t as strong as usual, either.
For one thing, only three of the top eight power-conference QBs on my list of Points Above Replacement (PAR) are on an undefeated team — Cam Ward of Miami (barely!); Dillon Gabriel of Oregon; Eli Holstein of Pitt. At the same time, more than half of the teams that ESPN gives at least a 50 percent chance to make the Playoff are quarterbacked by a player outside the Top 10 in PAR. So there’s a bit of a mismatch this year between passing productivity and team success — usually a key factor in determining the Heisman.
As an added element this year, the top PAR quarterbacks aren’t as good as they have been in recent seasons when a QB wins the Heisman. For 2024’s Top 5, here’s a comparison between their PAR per 13 team games and the average in previous seasons since 2016 (excluding 2020, when a WR won):
Unlike some recent years, when guys like Joe Burrow or Jayden Daniels — or occasionally even non-LSU QBs 😂 — put up ludicrous numbers that made their Heisman campaigns impossible to deny, we’re just not seeing that from anyone this year. Milroe has been the best of the bunch statistically, but he’s not on pace to be anywhere near the Daniels/Burrow/Kyler Murray/Johnny Manziel/Marcus Mariota/RGIII/etc. level of PAR per 13. So in the face of historic seasons by Jeanty and Hunter, it makes sense that a QB Heisman might just not be in the cards this year.
🏆 Nobody Has Had Their “Heisman Moment” Yet: Right now, the Heisman speculation is partly theoretical. Injuries can happen, and performance can slow down as players enter the meat of the conference schedule. There’s a reason why nobody on the FanDuel list is any higher than +240 to win — we still need to see the season play out more.
And that especially applies to the idea of special moments that help win players the award. Think of Desmond Howard literally striking a Heisman pose after this punt return, or these more recent plays that solidified various players’ candidacies:
The thing is, we don’t necessarily know when these moments will happen, or who they’ll happen for — and we might not for a while. But if somebody like Ward or Gabriel can keep winning while producing some iconic plays, or if Milroe can bring Bama back from their loss to Vandy and do something special late in the year, the QBs could have their night at the Downtown Athletic Club after all.
🏈 Anchors Aweigh
While he wasn’t on our list of Heisman favorites above, we have to give a special shoutout to Navy’s junior QB Blake Horvath, who has been an unexpected fixture near the top of the PAR rankings for most the 2024 season to date.
Navy is no traditional quarterback factory, to say the least. Aside from Malcolm Perry in 2019 — who passed for 1,084 yards and ran for 2,017 while accounting for 28 total TDs — and maybe a few Keenan Reynolds seasons before that, it’s been a long time since the Middies had a truly standout QB. (In fairness, it’s hard to stand out as a passer when you run the triple option.) Things were really bad as recently as last season: Navy’s signal-callers were collectively below the replacement level, while the team had the fifth-worst offense in FBS by SRS (-9.97 PPG relative to average).
But running the Wing T offense — yes, a scheme invented in the 1950s — under new offensive coordinator Drew Cronic, Navy has executed one of the most remarkable year-over-year offensive improvements college football has ever seen.
Their SRS rating on that side of the ball — which, remember, was down in the absolute dumpster of FBS last year — has improved by a stunning 27.5 points per game (!!!) relative to an average team, with a ranking of No. 2 in the nation (behind only Jeanty and the Broncos) this year. And Horvath has been in the middle of it all as the trigger man for the attack, both passing and rushing. He currently leads all FBS passers in efficiency (min. 50 attempts) and QBR, ranks 40th among all players in the country (at any position) in total offense per game, and is 10th in total touchdowns per game.
Add it all up, and Horvath ranks No. 4 in schedule-adjusted QB PAR so far this year. Between his individual stats and the production of his team — both schedule-adjusted — it could be argued that only Milroe and maybe Ward are in the same zip code as Horvath in combining those two essential aspects of quarterbacking:
Horvath may still not be on the Heisman radar — or is it sonar? — but he's absolutely been charting a new course for Navy football this season.
Filed under: College Football, QB U
Yes, I’m using the same email as for Baseball Bytes, LOL.
As strategies change, so do the number of candidates. When running was king, the battle was often between RBs...now, with passing taking over, it's QBs. The more QBs you have, the more the positional vote is split - leaving the Trophy for the one outlier performer at another position.
The real vote remains the one with dollars at the Draft. There, I suspect quarterbacks will dominate again as every QB mysteriously "moves up" some Draft board a week out after a meaningless workout in shorts. I know, I know...he's a freak who made every throw. Yawn.
In fact, the Heisman winner list you provide is a counter indicator of future success. It reminds me of a Dennis Miller joke from the 80s where he says that he never enters the Publishers Clearinghouse Sweepstakes after seeing all the "winners" on TV, since to do so was an admission that he opened that letter and...
..."you thought there were a lot of zeros in the prize. Sheesh."
Man, what a ship graveyard of wrecked and decaying professional careers that list is. Is it time to retire the Heisman forever? Now, there's a vote I could get behind.